MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Kips Bay Medical, Inc. (NAS: KIPS) along with Manny Villafaña, its Founder, Chairman and CEO, announced today that the United States Food & Drug Administration ("FDA") has granted approval for additional US patients to be enrolled in Kips Bay Medical's "eMESH I" clinical feasibility trial of its eSVS Mesh.

In its initial approval, the FDA indicated that it would allow a staged enrollment within the United States, starting with five patients at up to four sites in the United States. The FDA has now increased the approved number of patients from five to fifteen(15).

As previously reported, Kips Bay Medical will provide six month follow-up angiograms on the first ten patients, from the U.S. and Europe combined, for the FDA to review. If the FDA determines that these angiograms are acceptable, Kips Bay Medical expects to receive the approval from the FDA to enroll the remaining U.S. patients.

The eMESH I clinical feasibility trial is a multi-center, randomized study of external saphenous vein support using Kips Bay Medical's eSVS Mesh in CABG Surgery. The objective of this study is to demonstrate the initial safety and performance of the eSVS Mesh for use as an external saphenous vein graft ("SVG") support device during coronary artery bypass ("CABG") surgery. The Company expects to enroll up to 120 patients at eight European and four U.S. sites and further expects to use the data from this study as the basis for a pivotal trial in the U.S.

About Kips Bay Medical

Kips Bay Medical, Inc., founded in 2007 and headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a medical device company focused on manufacturing and commercializing its external saphenous vein support technology, or eSVS Mesh, for use in coronary artery bypass grafting surgery. The eSVS Mesh is a nitinol mesh sleeve that, when placed over a saphenous vein graft during CABG surgery, is designed to improve the structural characteristics and long-term performance of the saphenous vein graft. Additional information about Kips Bay Medical, Inc. can be found at www.KipsBayMedical.com.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this news release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are provided under the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by that Act. For example, statements in this press release regarding Kips Bay Medical expectations of further approvals and patient enrollments are forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties which could cause results to differ materially from those projected, including but not limited to the risks detailed from time to time in Kips Bay Medical's SEC reports, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Kips Bay Medical encourages you to consider all of these risks, uncertainties and other factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements contained in this release.